1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to product and/or service pricing, and particularly to an automated unified pricing method and system for calculating via a computer or other computing device, a unified price for a bundle of goods, services or a combination of goods and services using linked usage correlation values calculations for products of the bundle or combined multiple product offer (CMPO).
2. General Background
Today, all bundle prices are estimated through judgment or by market trial and error. One approach to estimate bundle prices is the use of cross-sell data to determine bundle components. However, the percentage of customers who have purchased e.g. two different products is not a good indication of bundle suitability. Cross-sell is, in most cases, a historical artifact of company sales efforts. I have determined that the cross-sell approach does not provide bundle pricing based on a correlation estimates indicative of purchase dynamics.
As can be readily seen, there is a continuing need for a mathematical formula that allows a computer or other computing device to calculate the value, and therefore provide a baseline for human adjustment, or for direct unified pricing of the bundle or CMPO.
Another continuing need is for a method to calculate a unified price which uses the pattern of joint purchases to develop a linked usage correlation value of those purchases wherein the correlation values among candidate products of the bundle are used to establish a unified price.
As will be seen more fully below, the present invention is substantially different in structure, methodology and approach from that of other pricing methods.